I Couldn't Stand Out, So I Died!

The sound of a metal door slamming shut dragged you back into a state of semi-consciousness. Smoke tainted air clawed its way down your throat and settled heavily in your crushed lungs. For an agonizingly long moment you thought you might have hallucinated the sound. That your body was preforming some last ditch effort to stop you from fading away completely. Though if you weren’t in any position to save yourself before you certainly weren’t now. You couldn’t feel your legs anymore let along the rest of your body. You could see your bruised hand and bits of grit on the floor but not the unpleasant texture that would surely come with it being pressed into the pads of your fingers.

You didn’t have the capacity to be worried about any of this anymore. On a good day you felt helpless and compelled to bend to the will of those around you; on a bad you were drowning. Somehow dying was easier, this was out of your hands. There was nothing you could do. For once the feeling of helplessness wasn’t self inflicted. You could find some scraps of comfort in that.

You strain your ears against the sounds of shifting rubble and your bones creaking beneath the weight of the collapsed ceiling. A couple sets of heavy footsteps. Shuffling out in the stairwell. The crackle of a radio and indecipherable words. There were people out there. You weren’t going to die here.

Hope sparked in your chest. You felt your hear skip a beat and took a breath that was a little too deep. The pain that spider-webbed through your ruined chest sent black spots dancing in your vision. You worried you would pass out again.

You grit your teeth, touching your forehead to the grainy floor. The new sensation of plaster dust pressed against your skin was something else to focus on. You count the seconds until they reached the door, or tried to. It was hard to focus on two things at once and listening too everything you had.

At first you thought you were fading away again, as the sounds and vaguely human voices got fainter. Not higher up you decided but back down. Slowly. Then the door to another floor opened and faintly banged shut. Silence rings in your ears. They have to be coming back. They can’t just leave you here.

You repeated the thought to yourself, feeling what semblance of rationality you had coming apart at the seams the longer you were left to feeling your body start to fail around you. Weren’t you worth saving? Didn’t they care? Did you not matter, even now? It wasn’t fair.

You had tried so hard to do something, anything, worth noticing. You weren’t the smartest. You weren’t the most talented. You weren’t the most outgoing. At every turn you ended up being outshone by everyone around you. You had come to expect it at this point, but it still hurt. Why couldn’t your best be enough? What were you doing wrong? Every time you racked your brain for an answer you came up blank, and now the one time you really needed somebody else to pay attention to you they still overlooked you. Was wanting just one person to see you too much to ask for?

You supposed it was.

You exhale a little too deeply and squeeze your eyes shut. The rubble shifts on top of you and you couldn’t help but wish more would topple down on top of you to cut this ordeal short.